How will Iowa vote in the GE?

[RaphaelDLG]

I think she has a better chance to win it simply because it is a Lean or at least Tilt Democratic state.

Add into that the fact that it's not an amazing fit for Trump arguably...

[RaphaelDLG]

I think she has a better chance to win it simply because it is a Lean or at least Tilt Democratic state.

Add into that the fact that it's not an amazing fit for Trump arguably...

Plus it has many evangelicals which he will presumably perform poorly.

He actually does pretty well among evangelicals - he won them in the Republican primary while it was still a competitive race, astoundingly - proving that most Christians have never actually cracked open their Bibles.

He does poor, however, among upper midwest voters/people with whatever that intangible midwestern sensibility is called.

[RaphaelDLG]

Republican. it is already trending Republican and I believe it will eventually achieve a status similar to North Carolina or maybe even Missouri within the next 20 years.

In 20 years North Carolina will be lean DEM :-)

I think Trump is an awful fit for the upper midwest. The question may become: does Trump drag Grassley down with him? That would be a prime Senate pick up for the DEMS.

Clinton could win by ten and, unfortunately, Grassley would still murder whoever the other Democrat is.

[RaphaelDLG]

Republican. it is already trending Republican and I believe it will eventually achieve a status similar to North Carolina or maybe even Missouri within the next 20 years.

It's actually not trending Republican, at least at the presidential level. It's closer than other fast-changing states, but basically all voters 18 - 64 have trended Democratic since 2004. 65+ is arguably the only one trending Republican and even that is not much lower than 50-50 D/R. The Iowan electorate is not as red you might think and the younger voters who will make up the state's future electorate are more Democratic than every other age group in Iowa and appear to be staying that way. That means the future is most definitely not more Republican, barring some major disaster that is pinned on Democrats.

Of course it would be nice to have more data (which we will after November), but right now the statistics are not favorable to the GOP. Same story in virtually all of the other blue + swing states. This is what happens when you alienate an entire generation of voters.

Setting aside the 2016 election and looking at the longer-term picture, this is a slightly silly attitude to take. Parties in America have always shifted in response to demographics so that the balance between them is roughly 50/50 -- over the past hundred years, no party has ever enjoyed more than a decade of unbroken control unless a war broke out at the end of the decade prolonging that timeframe, and parties that have had more than a presidential term of unbroken control have always seen factions align with the minority party on certain issues to presage the return of 50/50 (the way the conservative minority of Democrats aligned with the GOP after the 1938 midterms, to use the most obvious example).

So it seems doubtful that demographics will ever give Democrats a permanent majority, since the opposite party will always shift to ensure the 50/50 dynamic remains. Republicans now mildly embracing gay rights and moving slowly away from interventionism are just two very obvious examples of that sort of party shift. Parties in America stand for nothing beyond being half of society.

Great post!  Iowa tilts blue right now, though.

[RaphaelDLG]

@ Virginia - the Republican party is incontrovertibly incompatible in its current  formulation with the millennial generation on social issues.  but, assuming they eventually wise up and change, how strong do you think the effects of generational imprinting will be, given that partisan identification in general has drastically declined?

[RaphaelDLG]

@ Virginia - the Republican party is incontrovertibly incompatible in its current  formulation with the millennial generation on social issues.  but, assuming they eventually wise up and change, how strong do you think the effects of generational imprinting will be, given that partisan identification in general has drastically declined?

Partisan identification has declined over the past few decades, but partisan polarization has actually increased.

Is the imprinting the result of an emotional attachment to a party or a mental attachment to a set of ideas?

[RaphaelDLG]

@ Virginia - the Republican party is incontrovertibly incompatible in its current  formulation with the millennial generation on social issues.  but, assuming they eventually wise up and change, how strong do you think the effects of generational imprinting will be, given that partisan identification in general has drastically declined?

Partisan identification has declined over the past few decades, but partisan polarization has actually increased.

Is the imprinting the result of an emotional attachment to a party or a mental attachment to a set of ideas?

Why not both?

But seriously, there is both more ideological polarization and fewer swing voters than at any point since the WWII, and maybe Reconstruction - though we lack robust ideological data for that timeframe. People like to call themselves "independents" and whatever, you do you, but they're consistently voting for one party over another at higher rates than in living memory.

I guess the point is if the parties undergo ideological realignment the ideological gulf might be jeopardized if the imprinting is based on ideology alone.